No way could I keep this good news to myself, so here’s my ultra-fast (and possibly mistake-ridden) translation of an article published on November 30, 2012, in the online version, LeMonde.fr, of the French newspaper, Le Monde. Read and celebrate!

In the home of a Buddhist monk located in an exclusive part of an eastern suburb of Paris, Muslim homosexuals will join together for their first prayer on Friday, November 30. The ten-meter square room which Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, the sponsor of this project, is preparing will become the first ultra-progressive mosque in Europe, a gay and feminist friendly space where GLBT people will be welcome and where women will be encouraged to lead prayer.

The Buddhist monk, Frederico Joko Procopio, homosexual and militant supporter of LGBT rights, loaned him a part of his dojo out of solidarity.

Until then, Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed prayed every Friday with several thousand believers in the Grande Mosquée of Paris. This Muslim homosexual appreciated the anonymity of this mosque and the content, never political, of the services held there. But such a combination is rare, and even in the crowd, certain individuals, especially transitioning transsexuals or effeminate men, “stood out and were immediately identified,” he said. He intends, then, to offer a place to all those who cannot feel comfortable in a traditional worship space.

Married to a South-African since 2010, Zahed declares, “Muslims must not feel ashamed. Homosexuality is not condemned anywhere, neither in the Qur’an nor in the Hadith. If the Prophet Mohammed were alive, he would marry homosexual couples.” He dreams of an Islam, “peaceful, reformed, inclusive” that accepts blasphemy since “critical thoughts are essential to spiritual development.

“AN ABERRATION”

Not a single Muslim organization has supported this initiative. For many Imams and Muslim personalities in France, this project goes against religious teachings.

“We don’t blame homosexuals, but we can’t make space for them to the point that their activities become part of society,” explains Dalil Boubakeur, Rector of the Grande Mosquée of Paris. According to him, this mosque will not be recognized. “It’s something outside of the community of faithful,” he says.

A PROGRESSIVE ISLAM

So-called “inclusive” mosques already exist in South Africa, in the United States, and in Canada, but the one in Paris is the first in Europe. The organization, Muslims for Progressive Values, started in 2007 in the United States, has identified a dozen of such worship spaces in North America.

“The goal of Muslims who designate themselves progressive is not to focus on a ‘defense’ of sexual minorities against an interpretation of Islam that they judge intolerant and obsolete based on their experience of having been discriminated against,” explains Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, a research associate at the Institute of Research and Study of the Arab and Muslim World (IREMAM). “They want to reform, to promote an Islam that is inclusive of progressive values,” she adds.

No longer content to hike the Appalachian trail or climb Denali, devout secularists have turned their sights on pilgrim routes. One such route is the Way of St. James which wends through rugged French terrain, up and over the Pyrenees, and across the desolate plains of Northern Spain until it reaches the city of Santiago, just short of the Atlantic coast that ancients believed to be the edge of the world. The Way now attracts a great deal of attention not just from pilgrims but from such challenge-seekers. Anxious to share the good news of this difficult, but achievable journey, some return home and write guides to assist their fellow non-pilgrims. So what? So this: some of these writers, anxious to underscore their secular motivations, betray in their travelogues their distaste for religious piety.

Such is the viewpoint of Conrad Rudolph, Professor of Medieval Art at the University of California Riverside. In Pilgrimage to the End of the World, his book about hiking the Way of St. James, he repeatedly reminds the reader that he is most definitely “not a believer in miracles or the otherworldly.” The book’s very title serves as Rudolph’s first disclaimer. A bona fide pilgrim undertakes the journey to reach the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela because its Cathedral is reputed to house the remains of Jesus’ disciple, Saint James the Greater. Rudolph, seemingly worried that he’ll be mistaken for a religious pilgrim, signals, in his title, that the real goal of his pilgrimage was not the purported relics of St. James but the Atlantic Ocean, the “End of the World,” which is three days further on foot. No wonder then, that when Rudolph reaches Santiago, traditionally the “emotional high point” of the journey, he describes his arrival as “fun but not emotional.”

And so we have the novel phenomenon of pilgrimages undertaken by secularists, so embarrassed by the religious trappings of their journeys that they feel compelled to trumpet their lack of faith.

Rudolph defends his decision to hike The Way by explaining that he is merely following the ancient tradition of the “curious” onlooker. According to him, even in Medieval times, “many were highly curious about the world around them.” Apparently, this condition was so widespread that it was common for condemnations to be issued against those who made pilgrimages merely for reasons of “curiosity.”

Okay, point taken. Except that Rudolph’s curiosity never extends to wondering what it might be (or have been) like for pilgrims to undertake the journey to Santiago out of faith. Indeed, most pilgrims, are not “inveterate hikers” like Rudolph and so they, like their Medieval forebears, likely endure greater suffering as they negotiate rough terrain with heavy backpacks. What motivates them to keep going day after day? How does their faith sustain them when they are ailing, hurting and still weeks from reaching their goal? If Rudolph asked these questions of pilgrims he met along the way, he does not share the answers in his book.

The Way of St. James was especially popular during the Middle Ages. It attracted many pilgrims from France but pilgrims also set out from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, the eastern Austrian domains, and Slovakia. Before they could officially begin their treks, they first had to reach the town of Le Puy in France’s Massif Central. Then, braving bandits, persistent hunger, unpredictable weather, and ankle-busting paths, they set off to walk the thousand miles to Santiago. There’s every reason to suspect that the roundtrip journey would have lasted six months since Medieval pilgrims covered, on average, about 15 miles a day. While they belonged to all social classes, most pilgrims were penniless agrarians, serfs who set out for Santiago after becoming too broken down to provide useful labor to their masters or freeholders who “were better off in theory only.” Although poverty-stricken and often in ill health, tens of thousands set off on pilgrimage every year.

Why did these Medieval serfs and freeholders choose to undertake this journey? According to William Melczer, a Medieval scholar, they had many reasons. Pious love for St. James was the most common. Some went simply to pray. Others wanted forgiveness for a laundry-list of minor transgressions. Many used the journey as penance to atone for particularly soul-searing sins. Still others made their way to plead for better health and relief from pain. Their spirits were open to God and they had faith. How often they must have prayed, especially when they looked at the path ahead, knowing full well that having overcome one challenge, they would reach another. They rarely had enough food, often they had only pathetic shelter. Somehow, though, every morning, they found fresh courage and set off anew in spite of the hardships they had already endured and in spite of the hardships that awaited them.

Interestingly, theologians have discouraged pilgrimages. Church Doctors like Augustine railed against them. In his opinion they were “pointless” because the holy cannot “be localized in any given place.” And since the holy is everywhere, it follows that the holy is not found in extra measure in places where sacred relics are housed. No matter. For hundreds of years, pilgrims have ignored these theological directives. They know that when life follows its regular rhythms, the holy, though everywhere present, is easy to ignore. So they walk to be with God. During a thousand miles of contemplation, the holy is close—as close as one’s breath.

Why did Rudolph undertake this journey? He’s quite unclear on that score, fuzzy even. He writes about wandering through the early dawn light along a mountain ridge in northwestern Spain where the wind rustled the grass, the sun sparkled, and sheep bells sounded faintly from far off vales. His language is evocative and lovely, his prose pleasant. From time to time, he invokes the language of magic, saying “it was almost as if a spell had been cast.” Perhaps afraid of venturing into intellectually indefensible territory, he changes his mind and rejects magic, writing that, after all, “experiences like these can happen anywhere.” And then, he recants, explaining that, unlike walking Appalachian trail or hiking Denali, there is a special pay-off to pilgrimages because these experiences “don’t often happen with either the regularity or the strength that they did on the pilgrimage, where every day is an adventure…” Hmmm, not sure most hikers would agree.

In the end, Rudolph shifts gears again. It is not the “almost-magic” quality of his experiences, he decides, but the people he meets who made the journey a special event. The people are, he recalls, “almost consistently as interested in what you’re doing as you are yourself.”

Oh oh. Wait a minute here. There’s just a little problem.

People were consistently interested in what Rudolph was doing because they assumed that he was travelling to Santiago out of deeply-felt, religious convictions. Although a hiker, he decided to wear a clamshell tied to a cord around his neck. The clamshell is the symbol of St. James. By wearing it, Rudolph styled himself as a pilgrim. It placed him, he admits, in a “special group…worthy of immediate public informality, warmth, and help, no questions asked.” He recounts how, in a small mountain village, two old women “bless” him when they learn he is a pilgrim. Even more notable, he says, are those who ask him “to pray for them; one horribly desperate man clearly needing it, or something, very badly.”

For unfathomable reasons, Rudolph accepts those prayer requests. Sort of. After he arrives in Santiago and enters St. James Cathedral, he explains (with a clear conscience) that, “no,” he didn’t pray for the “horribly desperate man.” Nor did he pray “for any of the others who had asked [him] along the way to pray for them.” It is enough, he decides, to “think about them” as he stands in the transept. How lame is that? Would the “horribly desperate man” agree with him or would he hope that even a hiker like Rudolph would, upon reaching the Cathedral at the end of the road, drop his pride, bend his knees, and pray?

These, then, are some of the quandaries you will face if you are a devoutly-secular hiker interested in hiking the Way of St. James or some other pilgrimage route. Why choose this option instead of a hike through one of America’s or Europe’s fine national parks? Will you wear the pilgrim’s badge? Will you accept the kindness of strangers even when you realize they offer it because they mistake you for a pilgrim? Will you accept prayer requests? Will you honor those requests? How?

Whatever you decide, you will be just as welcome on the pilgrim routes as you would have been in Medieval times. To close, here are some verses from “La Pretiosa,” a 12th Century hymn about a hospice for pilgrims on the road to Santiago. Other stanzas describe how monks would wash the feet, cut the hair, and trim the beards of male pilgrims—services you are, sad to say, unlikely to find today.

Its doors open to the sick and well,

to Catholics as well as to pagans,

Jews, heretics, beggars, and the indigent,

and it embraces all like brothers.

Resources: David Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000); William Melczer, The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela (New York: Italica Press, 1993); Conrad Rudolph, The Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Courage! Howard Westwood’s 1939 Lenten Manual uses outdated, high-flown language, is written in the mode of all-men-all-of-the-time, and mentions several, mostly-forgotten dead people. Still, his exercises and meditations are worth a look.

Besides, Lent isn’t supposed to be easy. So, as Westwood might say, abandon your safe haven and sail into the high seas of engaged reflection.

Here are a few more days from his Manual, in grey, one of the colors of the season.

DAY 6 (1st Tuesday): “We Avow Our Faith”
“Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other.” These words of Luther remind us of a statement by Prof. Kirsopp Lake: “Faith is not belief in spite of evidence, but life in scorn of consequence — a courageous trust in the great purpose of all things and pressing forward to finish the work which is in sign, whatever the price may be.” So do we avow our faith, without hesitation, equivocation or apology. For the moment we leave argument and discussion behind. We are engaged in an enterprise that we will defend at all hazards and promote without compromise. We do not ask for a secure haven for we propose to sail the high seas. We do not ask for guaranteed certainty for we possess what is more important, the inward certitude of consecrated purpose.

Exercise: Dwell upon the assertion, “We become what we affirm.” Some psychologists condemn wishful thinking, therefore comment on, “The right kind of wishful thinking leads to creative power.”

Meditation: Spirit of Life, give us the courage to match our purpose, the will to endure and the trust which falters not. Above all, strengthen daily within us faith equal to our high resolve.

[The 2nd week’s theme.]IMPLICATIONS OF THE AVOWAL

DAY 7 (2nd Wednesday): “In God”
In his essay “Is Life Worth Living?” William James utters words of profound insight in declaring “God himself may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity.” He also quotes William Salter, the late leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society: “As the essence of courage is to stake one’s life as a possibility, so the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists.” In avowing our faith in God, we are staking our life on the possibility that the world is not a meaningless void, but that the highest within us reflects and reveals the Life and Intelligence through which all things exist.”

Exercise: Dwell on St. Paul’s statement, “We are co-laborers with God.” What do you think about the quotation from Wm. James?

Meditation: O Soul of All in the heart of each, help me to trust my deepest intuitions as expression of thy purpose, and in loyal devotion teach me to fulfill them in the experience of life.

DAY 8 (2nd Thursday): “In Eternal Love”
How keen in their insight these words of the Bard of Avon:

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove.

How beautiful in its constancy the frequent devotion of husband and wife, of parent and child! Yet human love is sometimes inconstant, for often it is influenced by changing circumstance and the passing of the years. The prophet causes the Eternal to say, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Reflect on the eternal constancy of Nature in the rhythms of day
and night, the seasons, seed-time and harvest, etc. Note the great certainties in the invariableness of Nature’s laws. The manifestations of Nature are infinite, but Nature herself is unchanging. The laws of Love are likewise unchanging.

Exercise: The thought in the lesson is a challenge to our own constancy. This phase of the avowal is a pledge to overcome fickleness of mood and temper. Let us examine ourselves in this.

Meditation: O Spirit of Love, how often have we betrayed thee! By they divine constancy, control our changing moods and the waywardness of our affections. Keep the compass of our spirits ever true.

DAY 9 (2nd Friday): In All-Conquering Love
It is the nature of Love never to know defeat. Among the most revealing parables of the Great Teacher is that of the Lost Sheep, in which the shepherd seeks for the wanderer from the fold “until he finds it.” In his majestic poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson likens the Divine Spirit to a relentless seeker forever on the trail of the soul of man. Likewise, the unknown author of the 139th Psalm, when he exclaims, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”

In his hour of trial George Matheson cried, “O Love, that wilt not let me go!” There is a persistent quality in Love which never surrenders.

Exercise: Read Thompson’s poem referred to in the less. Take the time, even if you have to visit a library to obtain the poem. Treat the thought personally, “Love is destined to have its way with me.”

Meditation: O Love forever seeking us, teach experiences of our lives, thou art indeed the highest expression of the Universal Life. Teach me the secret of thine enduring patience, for in this is the assurance that thou shalt prevail, even with me.

It hardly seems possible, but a full year has passed since my first post! Forty-two posts later, the time has come for me to set blogging aside. With Ph.D. exams scheduled for February, 2010, I must focus on my studies and nothing but my studies.

When I launched this blog, little did I expect the number of visits it has received (more than 5000 to date) nor the number of comments (more than 100).

So thanks. Thanks for walking with me and for sharing your thoughts. I’ve enjoyed hearing from you!

I’ll continue to monitor this site so please don’t hesitate to leave more comments.

I may return to blogging sometime in March. No promises though. I’ll have to see what kind of demands there are on my time.

Good-bye for now. May life treat you tenderly.

I leave you with the following prayer, written by one of my favorite authors, the Unitarian minister, A. Powell Davies:

Help Us, O God, in a world so full of what is wonderful, ever changing, ever surprising us with new revelations of life’s power and beauty, to accept with gratitude all that gladdens us, and with fortitude all that brings us grief.

Let us take time to watch the morning and the evening skies, to look often and long at the marvelous earth and all that lives upon it, to be with heart and soul a friend and neighbor and a part of humankind.

Let us rejoice in the heritage bequeathed to us from yesterday, and in the festivals of faith and hope.

Let us look at our world as it is, and seek a wisdom that is not censorious.

Let us look into our own hearts and be brave enough to separate the evil from the good.

Let us be learning always, from all that we see and do, and from all that happens to us.

And if shadows overtake us, let us not dim within ourselves the light that helps others to live.

Give us, O God, to carry with us the kindness that we look for, to be gentle as we wish the world were gentle, and by being loving, to bring closer to fulfillment all that is the fruit of love.

The man gazed guiltily at his old friend across his congealing plate of huevos rancheros. He’d flown into Albuquerque the day before, two months after he’d watched his wife lose her battle with breast cancer. Now, as he ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, he agonized over the affair he’d had during his previous visit to Albuquerque a year earlier. His wife had already been diagnosed. He’d been scared and lonely. He’d wanted to forget his troubles, if only for an hour or two. “I should’ve stopped myself,” he sighed now with remorse. Both men felt uneasy. What the speaker wanted, more than anything else, was to make amends. He wanted forgiveness, too. But now that his wife had died, who could forgive him? Most importantly, he wanted to be made whole once more; in other words, he wanted redemption. But to whom could he make amends? And who could forgive him? Where was redemption to be found?

A Midrash:

Wisdom was asked: what is the punishment of a sinner? and answered: sinners will be prosecuted by [their own] vice.

Prophecy was asked: what is the punishment for the sinner? and answered “the soul that sins, it shall die” [Ezek. 14:4].

God was asked: what is the punishment of the sinner? and answered: let him do repentance [teshuva] and be expiated.

Those who turn over part of their day to spiritual exercises know that a process like the four-step lectio divina process takes dedication and practice. Without a doubt, the more transcendent the God, the harder it is to reach that God. Because smart readers want to know, and there were smart readers during the late medieval ages (the golden age of mysticism), a whole host of spiritual ‘how-to’ guides were written and circulated. Their purpose? Not much different from today’s–to offer helpful tips to monastics and devout lay-people trying to make a connection with an invisible, unknowable God through ascetic devotions.

One such manual was written by a Spaniard called Francisco de Osuna in the early 1500’s. A Franciscan monk whose life was dedicated to prayer, he not only meditated on the passion of Christ but he also practiced what he called ‘recollection.’ This term doesn’t mean ‘to remember,’ but rather to collect one’s self again and again—the way we use the word when we say something like: “she’s always so calm and collected!” For Osuna, becoming spiritually ‘collected’ was best achieved through a process of prayer designed to go deeper into one’s self rather than designed to turn outward to ‘mere word and reading’ (a dig at lectio divina?). Perfect recollection “is a moderation and serenity of the soul that is as quiet as if becalmed and purified and disciplined in harmony within.” Osuna wanted nothing less than to achieve a state of nearly-permanent recollection, or of alertness and receptivity to God.

Osuna’s recollection demands both mental concentration and active directing of the mind, but the pay-off of such hard work (so he claimed) is making friendship and communion with God possible—a friendship he described as “more sure and more intimate than ever existed between brothers or even between mother and child.”

He wrote several books but the Third Spiritual Alphabet is the ‘how-to’ guide for recollection. A ‘spiritual alphabet’ will strike some as strange. Osuna decided to organize his maxims and treatises according to the letters (and the Spanish tilde) of the alphabet as an act of humility. In his words, “We must become as little children, learning our ABC’s of spirituality.”

Osuna’s alphabet proceeds logically, describing the process one follows as one ascends from the lower stages of recollection to the higher. One is to move through the three major forms of prayer, from lowest to highest:

vocal prayer (active)

prayer of the heart (active)

mental or spiritual prayer (passive)

Realizing that distractions and run-away thoughts can plague even the most experienced re-collector, Osuna recommends disciplining the soul gently and lovingly. The exercise of recollection, he says, ‘is not achieved by force but by skill’ and ‘nothing is more skillful than love, which should be like the whip used to start a top so it will spin again and always turn without falling over.”

Osuna also warned that, especially at first, we must be ready to dedicate lots of time and effort (he recommended 2 hours per day!) to practicing spiritual prayer. If we persevered, he promised that the day would come when we would realize that the highest stage, spiritual prayer, “is most certainly worth more than an entire year in vocal prayer.”

Recollection requires that we learn to calm and quiet the understanding. Since God (or at least the God recollection is designed to reach) is beyond the capacity of ordinary thought to comprehend, we cannot approach God via ordinary thought. Instead, we must achieve the nearly-impossible feat (especially for the novice) of directing all of our spiritual attention to God. If we pull this off, then “In the darkness of unknowing the soul feels reassured by the light of spiritual consolations, when it feels the stirring of joy in the soul as a result.”

To critics of spiritual consolations or to those who practice them for no other reason than to tap into the happiness-center of the brain (the left frontal cortex), Osuna would have countered: as “long as we do not desire them for our own sake but for the sake of loving God, then they are entirely appropriate.”

So, if you’re one of those lucky people with a couple of hours a day to spare, then by all means, try Osuna-style recollection. Whether your God is utterly transcendent or not, no one ever promised exercise would be easy, not even the spiritual kind.

Stuff in books can help us pray. The monastics prayed through divine reading – in fact, a twelfth-century Carthusian monk by name of Guigo II worked out the four-step process that’s been in use ever since.

And what are those four steps? Reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation.

You’ll want to select a passage—a paragraph from a book, a short poem, or a few verses from Scripture. You can choose a favorite passage or one that you find challenging.

Before you start, take a few deep breaths. Now you’re ready to begin.

First, reading. Read your passage slowly several times, paying attention to the words, how they fit together, their rhythms, their meanings, their themes. If you’ve chosen a ‘secular’ poem or piece of prose, you may wish to rewrite it to turn it into a prayer. If you’ve chosen a theological or scriptural passage, rewrite it (if need be) to make it fit your theology. Or you can use the text as is—whatever works best for you.

Take this stanza from “Ode to the Table” by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. The words in bold are Neruda’s originals; I added the italicized text to turn Neruda’s stanza into a prayer.

Oh God,
You made the world a table
“engulfed in honey and smoke,
smothered by apples and blood.
The table is already set,
and we know the truth
as soon as we are called:
whether we’re called to war or to dinner
we will have to choose sides,
have to know
how we’ll dress
to sit
at the long table,
whether we’ll wear the pants of hate
or the shirt of love, freshly laundered.
It’s time to decide,
they’re calling.” Help us make the right choice, oh God.

Second, meditation. Which words or passages catch your attention? Sit quietly with them. Let them sit in your mind like stones in your hand, smooth if comforting, rough if challenging.

How would this work? If you used the Neruda example for your text-based prayer, you could reflect on the juxtaposition of honey/apple with smoke/blood. Or you could focus on the image of the world as a table—what would it mean to imagine the world as a place where you eat, where life is a meal—what would nourish you, what would make you ill, what would make you hunger for more?How about the idea that in times of war, we have to make a decision?If you had to choose sides, which would you choose? You could consider whether one side is always the side of hate and the other the side of love, as Neruda suggests.

Third, prayer. Respond to the meditation by praying, not intellectually, but by speaking (aloud or in your head) your own words directly to God.

Fourth, contemplation. Set all words aside if you can and enter into the space created by the word-prayers. This is a time of simple focus on God, a time of resting in God.

If you carry out the spiritual practice of divine reading at the same time every day, it will become a habit. An hour is ideal, or half-an-hour in the morning and another at night. This may sound like a lot but the mind often takes a while to settle into quiet receptiveness. Also, you’ll want to choose comfortable clothes and a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed or distracted.

Is God unknowable, beyond the possibility of the human mind to comprehend? There are plenty of good reasons to be intentional about keeping God abstract. To preserve the one God as a word of appeal for every person, regardless of whether that person is male or female, is most easily achieved by denying that God has either male or female characteristics. Even so, if we’re honest, we usually find ways to give that concept some human-like characteristics. We, human beings, prefer gods that look, talk, feel, and think like us. Because if God doesn’t have something in common with us, exactly how are we supposed to relate to God?

In technical-speak, we anthropomorphize God—we give God human characteristics. When we want a personal relationship with a personal God, our god will have something in common with us.Christianity’s god-man, Jesus, offers the possibility of such a connection. So does polytheism’s many gods. If we’re female, we might find it more comfortable to talk to, or pray to, a god we visualize as female.Or if we’re feminists (male or female), we might consider females to be superior to males and God will be female. Or maybe we simply prefer a god who is mother-like, with all of the stereotypical attributes of the perfectly matronly-matron: you know, warm, unconditionally loving, benevolent, concerned, tender, soft, gentle, etc. Imagine a female god who’s like the mother we have (or wish we had) but even better—mother-gods never, ever get crabby!

So powerful is the urge to imagine God as female that Jewish rabbis, in spite of Judaism’s resistance to anthropomorphizing God, sometimes used the name Shekhinahfor God in the Talmud. Shekhinah is a feminine form of the Hebrew root-word meaning “to dwell” and so, the name Shekhinah denotes “God’s indwelling presence.” After the exile of Jews from the Holy Land and the destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple in 70 CE, the rabbis taught that the Shekhinah shared the people’s suffering and grieved with them. As for Christians, during the Middle Ages, they turned to the Virgin Mary in ever greater numbers, looking for comfort and solace during a time when Church doctrine made Christ less of a concerned intercessor and more of a retributive judge. Mary continues to play an important role; for some Catholics she’s almost a fourth person in the godhead.

But the burning question remains—if we insist that God is radically unitary, do we resist the urge to anthropomorphize God or do we decide we’re okay with God having male or female attributes?

If we really must anthropomorphize, then we can have our cake and eat it too by following the lead of the Talmudic rabbis. They recommend qualifying our metaphors for God with the phrase: “if it were really possible [to say such a thing]”. We would then talk about how God is like a mother “if it were really possible to say such a thing.” Granted, this phrase gets clunky, especially when praying. Or we could follow the approach of the 6th century Christian theologian known as Pseudo-Dionysius, and adopt the habit of negating any positive, or concrete, thing we say about God. How does that work exactly? Like this: “God is a mother and isn’t a mother. Such a linguistic device indicates how God is not only beyond motherhood but God is also beyond non-motherhood; God transcends all predicates.

Whether God is male or female or neither (if it is really possible to say that God is either male or female), may God bless you (if it is really possible to say that God blesses).

A quick glance at a few different faith traditions shows just how many ways there are to speak about the divine. For example, some traditional Jews won’t say the word God because they believe that it is too holy to pronounce. One is forbidden from making any representations of God—even in speech.When reading the Bible out loud, one is to replace the Hebrew word for G-d with the word Adonai, meaning Lord.

Sister Nancy Corcoran, a Catholic nun, argues against using the word, Lord, although it is a common word in Christian prayer as well as Jewish prayer.For her, the term Lord does make a representation—of a male God (notice, though, how the adjective “male” had to appear in front of the word, God, to indicate God had a gender).Sister Corcoran is an advocate of the name for God developed by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, a Professor of Divinity at Harvard University Divinity School.Taking a similar approach to that of Orthodox Jews, “Schussler Fiorenza prefers the spelling G*d because it suggests that, as humans, our ideas of and names for God are ambiguous and inadequate.It also allows for a God without male or female characteristics.”

How does Fiorenza pronounce the word G*d?This word looks as un-pronounce-able as the symbol used as a name for three years by the musician Prince. Unclear also are the reasons why, for Fiorenza, the word God necessarily suggests male or female characteristics.Certainly, many theologians and philosophers throughout the ages have not associated male or female characteristics with this word (like Fiorenza, they’ve also argued that our ideas of God are ambiguous and inadequate but, unlike her, they did not argue we should abandon the word).Okay, sure, the Bible refers to God as Him, but today, pronouns are often eliminated by sensitive theologians and philosophers (even if this sometimes results in awkward sentences).Take, for example, the sentence:“God wants you to love others as much as you love yourself or God’s Self.”

Just like we use the single word, actor, to refer to either a female (formerly known as an actress) or a male actor, the single word, god, can refer to a female god, a male god, a god without gender, a god with both genders, etc. (in the last two cases, the analogy with the word, actor, fails!).Unlike the word, Goddess, which does imply gender, the word, God, does not. Thanks to its plasticity, it is the superior choice.So why mess with it?

HNFFT (Her Nakedness’ Food for Thought):What do you call God?Does it imply has a gender? Can it serve as the word of appeal for anyone, male or female?

Your views on God (your theology) affect what you say when you pray. Not sure what to call God when you pray?Not sure how to start your prayers?Not even sure how to pray?

Here are three steps to help you come up with your own prayers and discover your theology at the same time.Yup.You get two for the price of one.

1.In the list below, circle all the words for God that most appeal to you.This list mostly duplicates one developed by Sister Nancy Corcoran (a Catholic nun).

The All-Compassionate, the All-Merciful, the Absolute Ruler, the Pure One, the Source of Peace, the Inspirer of Faith, the Guardian, the Victorious, the Compeller, the Creator, the Maker of Order, the Shaper of Beauty, the Forgiving, the Subduer, the Giver of All, the Sustainer, the Opener, the Knower of All, the Constrictor, the Reliever, the Abaser, the Exalter, the Bestower of Honors, the Humiliator, the Hearer of All, the Seer of All, the Judge, the Just, the Subtle One, the All-Aware, the Forbearing, the Magnificent, the Forgiver and Hider of Faults, the Rewarder of Thankfulness, the Highest, the Greatest, the Preserver, the Nourisher, the Accounter, the Mighty, the Generous, the Watchful One, the Responder to Prayer, the All-Comprehending, the Perfectly Wise, the Loving One, the Majestic One, Breath of Life, the Resurrection, the Witness, the Truth, the Trustee, the Possessor of All Strength, the Good, the Appraiser, the Originator, the Restorer, the Giver of Life, the Taker of Life, the Ever Living One, the Self-Existing One, the Finder, the Glorious, the Only One, the One, the Satisfier of All Needs, The Gracious One, the All Powerful, the Creator of All Power, the Expediter, the Delayer, the First, the Last, the Manifest One, the Hidden One, the Protecting Friend, the Supreme One, the Doer of Good, the Guide to Repentance, the Avenger, the Forgiver, the Clement, the Owner of All, the Lord of Majesty and Bounty, the Equitable One, the Gatherer, the Rich One, the Enricher, the Preventer of Harm, the Creator of the Harmful, the Creator of Good, the Light, the Guide, the Originator, the Everlasting One, the One Who Is Present and Has Always Been and Always Will Be Present, the Inheritor of All, the Righteous Teacher, the Lawgiver, the Patient One.

2.Add other words for God that appeal to you but don’t appear in the list.

3.Rewrite the following three prayers by substituting the words for God with the ones you prefer (and also by changing phrases as you see fit).Or choose other prayers, even ones whose theology strike you as vastly different from your own.The effort of rewriting different kinds of prayers will help you discover your theology because it’ll help you figure out what ways of talking to God work for you and which don’t.

Prayer A:O God whom humans have called the unknowable, whom they have sought in unfamiliar ways of thought and have come back empty-handed, let us see how much You are the God of common things and of every day experience, the God who is near and not far off.For surely, You are not only the end of the quest but the beginning, not the reward of life’s pilgrimage alone but its companion hope.Help us, if we cannot see You in the splendor of the sphere to see You in the miracle of every flower that grows, and when we need the strength and solace of Your love, let us seek it in one another.(prayer written by the Unitarian minister, Rev. A. Powell Davies)

Prayer B:O God, You have called us into life, and set us in the midst of purposes we cannot measure or understand.Yet we thank You for the good we know, for the life we have, and for the gifts that are our daily portion:

For health and healing, for labor and repose, for the ever-renewed beauty of earth and sky, for thoughts of truth and justice which stir us from our ease and move us to acts of goodness, and for the contemplation of Your eternal presence, which fills us with hope that what is good and lovely cannot perish.(Jewish Reform prayer)

Prayer C:God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray.Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee, shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand, true to our God, true to our native land. (often called the African-American anthem, prayed by the Reverend James Lowery at President Obama’s Inauguration)